Plant the seed. And Read.

You should read with your children!

Any expert would tell you that. And if you're a fan of Gove's recent quote: 'Britain has had enough of experts' then listen to me because I'm not. I'm just a Dad with a passion for reading to my daughter.

Reading with Esme is the usually the best part of my day. I mean let's be honest, kids do funny things. They might mispronounce words and make them sound like swear words. They might dip their toast in their water and then eat it. They might even do a poo when a family friend has just picked them up. But, generally speaking, reading hits the top three.

It's an opportunity to learn vocabulary and comprehension, to improve memory and to practise creativity, singing and imagination. And that's just for me. Esme learns stuff too.

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Now for the experts. Indeed, I wanted to share with you an amazing article written by the National Literacy Trust (2006, Christina Clark and Kate Rumbold). I'll include a couple of thoughtful points below before retiring to my sandwich...

1. Children who know adults who read for pleasure take it for granted that reading is a valuable and worthwhile activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991)

The beliefs held by children’s parents about the purposes of reading and how children learn to read relate to children’s motivations for reading. More specifically, parents who believe that reading is a source of entertainment have children with more positive views about reading than parents who only emphasise the skills aspect of reading (e.g. Sonnenschein et al., 2000)

1. Children of parents who believed that reading is a source of pleasure had greater reading motivation scores in primary school (Baker and Scher, 2002)

AND A FAVOURITE FACT OF MINE:

Baumann and Duffy (1997, p. 22), highlighted the following factor that help children become readers: A print-rich environment, where they are read to and given opportunities to read, where they see their caregivers read, have opportunities to engage in pretend play, are encouraged to interact with environmental print and visit the public library.

This is our philosophy and we look forward to proving this to you over the coming months! Have a great day.

As always, Happy Reading x